Rosie Bell on “understandable” antisemitism

“After 9/11 a mosque and a Pakistani community centre were fire bombed in Edinburgh. I’d dreaded something like that so like Ken Loach I wasn’t surprised. And I understood it because I know racist thugs will be racist thugs. But I didn’t think, it is understandable that random British Muslims (and Hindus and Sikhs who look like them) get grief because of the activities of some Saudis based in Hamburg. Disgraceful and totally crappy were the adjectives that sprang to my mind. Something understandable is not something understood. Something understandable is something excused.”

11 Responses to “Rosie Bell on “understandable” antisemitism”

“I do not consider myself an anti-Semite, yet I can also understand why some are… I have just provided a by no means comprehensive list of reasons why “I can understand very well that some people are unpleasant towards Jews.” I do not agree with them, but I can understand.”

Bored out of my mind, I gave up on White after a couple of paragraphs and moved to the comments. I cannot believe what I’ve just read in a magazine produced by a British publisher. It is the kind of poison I normally associate with Germany in the 1930s. Is this the level to which much of Britain has sunk? Can things be this bad?

What is clear is that the murder of the vast majority of Europe’s Jews brought barely sixty years of freedom from hatred and persecution for the Jewish people. I really do despair.

The recent war waged by the Israeli government and the Israeli army on Gaza, already under a blockade, underlines the particular responsibility of the United States and of the European Union in the perpetuation of the injustice done to the Palestinian people, deprived of its fundamental rights.

It is important to mobilize the international public opinion so that the United Nations and Member States adopt the necessary measures to end the impunity of the Israeli State, and to reach a just and durable solution to this conflict.

Following an appeal from Ken Coates, Nurit Peled, and Leila Shahid, and with the support of over a hundred well-known international personalities, it has been decided to organise a Russell Tribunal on Palestine.

Chairman of the Conference:
Stéphane Hessel – Ambassador of France
Speakers:
Ken Coates – Chairman of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation
Nurit Peled – Sakharov prize for the freedom of thought
Leila Shahid – General Delegate of Palestine to the European Union, Belgium and Luxembourg
Pierre Galand – President of the European Co-ordinating Committee of NGOs on the Question of Palestine (ECCP)

“The Russell Tribunal has no legal status but acts as a court of the people, a Tribunal of conscience, faced with injustices and violations of international law, that are not dealt with by existing international jurisdictions, or that are recognised but continue with complete impunity due to the lack of political will of the international community.”

Sabato, I agree. What do Yemenite and Ethiopian Jews have in common with Viennese Jews? Or the devout and dirt-poor Polish villagers with assimilated Dutch Jews, both indiscriminately murdered 60 years ago? Even the South and North Londoners in my family sometimes struggle to find common ground! What sensible reason can anyone have to hate all Jews because they are Jews?

Bialik,
Because, unless otherwise stated (and stated publically) “we” are all evil zionists laughing at the blood of Palestinian children – alternatively, we do not think Israel should be wiped off the face of the earth.

A word to the wise. Never expect to find an answer to “why the Jews from antisemites; they are the last people in the world who can tell the truth about the matter. After all, all they will say is that “it s not my fault. I don’t want to hate the Jews; but the Jews made me one because of what they did and what they do”!

I was at Brussel’s Press conference. Ken Loach never said that antisemitism was understandable. Stop reading mainstream press, tabloid press or false report on the internet and believe it all without even checking.